To keep the forum going, we can share ideas we have come across about video games that seem insightful and very logical.

One of the things I don't like are "story" games, especially the bad ones. They're usually low budget indie games that seem to be venerated by the gaming press and hipsters who seem to think that awesome game design is slowly walking around, looking at stuff while listening to a narrator, have very little or no real gameplay mechanics, there's no consequences to the player other than following the railroad plot, and I can almost tell that parts of the fiction had notes in the margins saying "player feels sad now". One of the most controversial people of this "genre" is David Cage. He's the guy who made Indigo Prophecy\Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, and the recent Beyond Two Souls.

I'm unsure now how he still keeps getting work or people still buy his games since these games have an interesting premise and mechanics at first, but soon becomes apparent they are badly thought out and very poorly designed. The big ones being the offensive stereotypes, huge plot holes, fantastical action set pieces that seem to be there just to look cool with no substance, and nonsensical plot twists among others. The one that has become the most telling of his ideas, the most memetic, and the one people make fun of him the most comes from a Joystiq\Engadget interview that essentially said "Game overs are a failure of the game designer."

"I've always felt that 'game over' is a state of failure more for the game designer than from the player," Cage told me at Gamescom. "It's like creating an artificial loop saying, 'You didn't play the game the way I wanted you to play, so now you're punished and you're going to come back and play it again until you do what I want you to do.' In an action game, I can get that – why not? It's all about skills. But in a story-driven experience it doesn't make any sense."

I did find a video that shows off why he's wrong about this. It shows off 2 very different games, Beyond Two Souls and The Evil Within. Both games are very flawed, with The Evil Within being almost unplayable at times with that extreme letterboxing. (The letterboxing is patched out on later versions.) But it's a better designed game than Beyond by using Game Overs and gameplay mechanics more effectively and you can see the players are much more engaged in that game, even if it's a little frustrating. For Beyond it became obvious how their choices didn't matter in how they proceeded. It was a hollow victory with their rage being palpable as a picture of David slowly fades in at the end.

The description to this video has a short 6 bullet point essay on how he's wrong about what a Game Over means and about having real choices and consequences in a video game makes it better, especially with games that are "story" based as well like the PS4 exclusive Until Dawn. That game is similar to Beyond, but had a lot of choices that heavily affected the story, how easy or hard it became, who survived, and who was probably the killer.

This guy throws his words back at him in one of the first line of the description:

"It's like creating an artificial victory saying "Despite any choices you made to the contrary, you played the game the way I wanted you to play. So now you're going to continue playing the way I want you to play, regardless of the choices you made' "

5429280 I love games that have engaging stories. The story is usually my favourite part of a game, but at the same time, if I can't enjoy playing it, then the game has failed its purpose. And to me, 'playing' means having my actions be affected by my skills. So if I die, I die. Great. I'll just try again. In games where you can't die and it's all story, like this guy's games, then it's just an interactive movie. It isn't a game.

I think my favourite games that show off how good gameplay and good story can easily come together are the Bravely Default series, Ōkami, and the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series. It's very possible to game over in all three series. The Bravely series (especially Bravely Default itself) is hard as nails, even on easy mode, and requires you to actually come up with a strategy and work to unravel the story. The story itself is really engaging, and I don't think the fact that I died like a hundred times trying to kill the final boss detracted from that. I think it's actually the opposite—when I finally did kill him, it was so satisfying.

Ōkami is very easy. But it's not so easy that you can't fuck up and die. It's one of my all time favourite games. It has really clever gameplay mechanics, the art style is lovely, and the story is great. I don't think the fact that I can die makes the story any less good. Again, I think it adds to the tension, given what will happen if I do die.

Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, depending on which game you play, can be either DS-throwingly difficult, or brain-meltingly easy. The one thing all four have in common is a huge focus on story and replay value. The hardest game, I think, is the original Red and Blue Rescue Team, which will make you want to kill someone. And then make you want to kill yourself. The easiest game is definitely Gates to Infinity, where the hunger system that made long dungeons hard is gone and a lot of the changes they made were poorly-conceived at best and mind-boggling at worst. Explorers of Sky and Super Mystery Dungeon definitely get the balance between difficulty and story right.

Rescue Team has a very short story, but it feels longer because the game is so hard and unforgiving. Gates to Infinity also has a very short story, which feels short because you can just breeze through it. Explorers and Super both have really long stories, but they're hard enough that playing them is a challenge while still being possible. It makes the story that much more enjoyable. And lo and behold, the least favourite game in the series according to fans is Gates to Infinity, because it's too short, too easy, and doesn't have much replay value. That detracts from the story, which already wasn't very good to begin with. And the favourite game according to fans is either Explorers or Super. There's a fine line between a story-driven game and an interactive movie. In the same way that an impossibly difficult game isn't fun to play, neither is a game so easy that you literally can't lose.

That guy who's blathering on about game overs being a design flaw may have died one time too many trying to fight Moltres in Rescue Team.